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Minimum wage up to $8 an hour in Minnesota

Associated Press
7:01 a.m. CDT August 1, 2014

In this April 29, 2013, file photo Lyle Cafe owner Barbara Johnson of Winthrop, Minn., calls for an increase in Minnesota's minimum wage at the State Capitol in St. Paul. Aug. 1, 2014, brings a gaggle of new laws for Minnesota, including an increase in the minimum wage from from $6.15 to $8 an hour.
(Photo:
AP
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ST. PAUL — Minimum-wage earners in Minnesota get a pay raise to $8 an hour.

For Minnesota’s lowest-paid workers, the most welcome move the Legislature made this year was increasing the minimum wage for the first time in nearly a decade.

The hourly wage moves from $6.15 to $8, the first in a series of steps that will eventually set it at $9.50 an hour for big companies, including those with gross annual sales topping a half-million dollars. Smaller companies phase up to $7.25 an hour next year, which is currently the federal minimum wage, then $7.75 by August 2016.

And starting in 2018, the minimum wage is indexed to inflation, which likely means automatic raises.